Samsung reported today that it has sold over 20 million Galaxy S II phones in 10 months (7 months faster than the Galaxy S model). The accumulated sales of the Galaxy S and SII models now surpasses 40 million (i.e. Samsung sold 20 million of each phone model). Just last month Samsung announced that is sold over 5 million SII phones in South Korea alone - and about 25% of South Koreans own this phone!.

Samsung's Galaxy S2 has a 4.3" WVGA Super AMOLED plus display, 1.2Ghz dual-core processor, NFC, Bluetooth 3 and HSPA+. It's only 8.49mm thick at its thinnest point.

Last week we reported on rumors that Samsung Electronics may spin off its LCD business, and today it is official - Samsung will form a new company (called Samsung Display, but it may be a temporary name) on April 1st. The new company will have over $6.5 billion in capital - which it will require as last year the LCD unit reported a loss of over $650 million.

In the beginning of February, Samsung Electronics reported that it is considering taking over Samsung Mobile Display. It's not clear what are SE's plans now, but it seems to be that the company is quickly shifting its focus to OLED displays. In the company's press release, Samsung makes the following rationalization:

AT&T's lower-end smartphone, the Pantech Burst is now available for free (with a contract). The Burst is a lower-end smartphone for AT&T's network. It features a 4" 800x480 Super AMOLED display, LTE, a 1.5Ghz dual-core CPU, 5mp camera and 16GB of internal memory (plus a micro SD slot).

AT&T are finally shipping Samsung's Galaxy Note LTE - for $299.99 (with a contract of course). An unlocked model costs $680. The Galaxy Note is an Android v2.3 phone/tablet with a 5.3" Super AMOLED display with an HD resolution (1280x800). Other specs include a dual-core 1.4Ghz processor, 8mp camera, touch display with pen input (it has a stylus). The phone is 9.65mm thick and weights 178 grams.

Samsung actually invented a new market with this large phone (or small tablet), and it's been quite successful - they shipped over a million Galaxy Note phones in two months even before marketing in the US.

Ignis Innovation announced today that they developed and verified the second generation of the MaxLife driver IC - suitable for OLED TVs, monitors and tablets. Ignis wouldn't reveal the changes since Gen 1 - so it may be that the real issue here is support for larger displays.

The MaxLife driver enables AMOLED displays on a-Si, LTPS and Oxide-TFT backplanes. For LTPS and Oxide-TFTs, it offers better yields. For a-Si backplanes, it enables stable and high frame-rate displays.

Back in November 2011 Philips signed an agreement with TPV to create a TV joint-venture. Philips transferred all of its existing display business into the newly formed entity (Philips TPV). The company is producing LCD TVs (CCFL and LED backlit).

Today we hear some reports that the company is starting to discuss OLED TVs - with plans to offer models at around 2013. The company will likely unveil its new range of TVs at IFA 2012 - although it isn't expected to show any OLED displays.

Samsung obviously has big plans for OLED TVs - and in fact it seems that the company sees OLEDs replacing LCDs in the (near?) future. Rober Kind, head of consumer electronics at Samsung, says that 55" is the largest size panel they can currently make, and they wanted to first make the largest OLED they can.

But Samsung's Super OLED TV range will grow - and will include new models in the future. He also agrees that one of the problems with OLED TVs is that they are so thin that you can't put good speakers on the TV. He says Samsung believes that in such cases it's best to use external speakers...

VG Scienta announced a new OLED deposition system, the OFT EDGE. The OFT (Organic Flexible Transparent) system can be used to deposit and analyse organic and inorganic layers on flexible and solid substrate.

The OFT Edge technology provides low temperature deposition of TCO, metals, small molecule deposition for organics, and an interchangeable modular construction with a wide selection of both deposition and analytical tools that can be attached to the systems to further increase the flexibility of the tool. VG Scienta offers ALD modules, XPS/UPS modules, STM, IR, and AFM modules. Modules within the system can be used as either standalone units when combined with a fast entry load lock or can be fully integrated into the multi-purpose cluster tool in conjunction with a central handler.

In the beginning of February, Samsung Electronics reported that it is considering taking over Samsung Mobile Display. Now there are some rumors that Samsung is planning to spin-off it's LCD panel division, perhaps to later merge it with the OLED unit.

Creating an independent flat panel producer (the biggest one in the world) that will need to be profitable and not just care for Samsung Electronic's interest will have lot's of implications. DisplaySearch reports that such a move also reflects a significant change in Samsung’s flat panel strategy - putting LCD and OLED in an equal position.

Universal Display's CFO (Sidney Rosenblatt) attended Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference 2012 yesterday, and he gave some very interesting updates. First of all, he commented on the recent AUO and Idemitsu Kosan (IK) agreement. According to Sid, IK are not selling emitter materials - they are offering organic materials that go into other layers of the OLED stack. They do not believe the AUO-IK agreement will have any effect of PHOLED sales to AUO, and in fact he tells us that UDC and Idemitsu Kosan are developing OLED materials together for Sony.

Host materials

In their latest earning report of 3Q 2011, UDC announced that they started to offer OLED host materials - and had almost $8 million in revenue from those materials. Today Sidney explained this business a bit further. Host materials are the materials that you put the emitting materials into (Sidney used a metaphor - if the OLED is chocolate milk, then the milk is the host material and the chocolate is the emitter). These materials are considered a commodity, and UDC didn't think to sell those as it's not an interesting market for them.